Explore and learn about everything from strategies for cleaning your books to dealing with potential fraud.
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Imagine a world where all businesses are empowered with timely, accurate financial data. That’s been the vision of Scrutinize since day one, and remains our north star.
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Most accounting software vendors will probably tell you that the hardest part of scaling a firm is improving operational efficiencies, but that's not actually true.
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The past ten years have been an electric time to be in bookkeeping. The team at Scrutinize is always trying to figure out what's around the next bend, and we thought it might be helpful to share some of our thoughts on how firms can take advantage of these trends.
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In the early 1900s, Henry Ford had ambitious plans to sell automobiles to everybody that wanted one. There was just one problem - the labor costs of assembling the cars made selling them at an affordable price unprofitable for the company. Sound familiar?
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People get confused about quality assurance in bookkeeping. It’s no wonder why. Most articles seem written by robots and aren’t particularly actionable. Let’s explore what quality assurance means and how you can get started implementing it in your firm.
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As your company grows, you will need to hire employees. You’ll need to set up some processes and controls to guide them as they go about incurring expenses related to doing their jobs. In this article, we explore things to consider when developing your internal employee expense and purchasing policies.
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SAFEs, convertibles, revenue financing, oh my. The options for funding your growing business are constantly evolving. We are going to break some of the most common into categories, and provide a little guidance on the various components of each.
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Tax season is your favorite time of the year, right? Either way, it’s a good idea to get familiar with some of the most common types of taxes businesses pay.
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What is your favorite part about the idea of starting your own business? Is it the mountain of legal paperwork necessary to get it set up correctly? I thought not. This article will arm you with the information you need to be successful.
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When you sit down to think about your plans for world domination, the possibilities seem endless. We explore some budgeting basics that will imbue with the confidence you need to take on the challenge.
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As much as we try to step around it, some accounting principles are still helpful to know before doing your own bookkeeping. We explore some of those principles and practices so that you can feel confident when posting a transaction of any kind to your books.
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The Chart of Accounts is the list of all the accounts you use to book financial transactions that occur in your business. For double-entry accounting, the type that uses debits and credits that offset each other, each transaction will hit two Chart of Accounts accounts. Here are some best practices for setting one up.
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There are many different titles in the accounting and finance department so is it any wonder why people are confused about which role they need when it comes time to hire someone to help them? We will examine three common roles needed at various times in a business’s life.
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We’ve all been there. You’re staring at your balance sheet and income statement and nothing makes sense. You know it’s wrong, but you have no idea how or why or what to do about it. You need a game plan, and we’re going to lay one out for you.
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The first time I found suspected fraud, my heart was beating so fast I thought it might explode, and my mind was racing with all of the possibilities. This is a step by step guide, in order, of what I recommend people do when they suspect they have found a fraudster.
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When entering transactions into your accounting system, it is almost guaranteed that you will make an error at some point. It is important to find them quickly, as they can add up to large swings in your financial statements.
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Choosing the right accounting software is one of the most important choices your department will make. All of the cool features and marketing promises made by salespeople are useless unless you get buy in from your team and use the tools correctly.
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Fraud creates anomalous patterns in your accounting data. To find it, we have to dive deep into that data and analyze it to find those patterns. Today we are going to cover a few patterns to look for and how they are linked to potentially fraudulent behavior.
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This week we will be examining the control environment. It is perhaps the most effective weapon in the accounting department’s arsenal, and a pillar of any fraud mitigation strategy.
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It is estimated that over $3.5 TRILLION is lost to fraud every year. That’s more than the combined GDP of the smallest 135 countries in the world. That’s the GDP of Germany.In any given year, the average business loses about 5% of their revenue to fraud. The lack of proper fraud prevention measures (controls) make them easier targets for fraudsters.
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There was always something attractive to me about accounting and finance because I thought numbers didn’t lie. Except they do. And they keep secrets too. Scrutinize identifies potential fraud, human errors and integration issues hiding in your accounting system.
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